


Searching for Sanity

by Sarah1281



Category: American Horror Story
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 03:32:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4731320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarah1281/pseuds/Sarah1281
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Constance's youngest child doesn't know what's wrong with the house next door, she *doesn't*, but she's sick of her neighbors constantly dying and sick of everyone expecting her to be another Tate. Really, it was a wonder she didn't leave sooner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Searching for Sanity

2010

Seraphina Langdon put the last of her belongings in her second suitcase and closed it with a snap. She glanced around the room one final time, more out of a desire to see if she had forgotten anything than out of any sort of nostalgia. She may have spent the majority of her life in this room but she was never going to come back and she certainly wouldn't miss it.

It was a perfectly nice room (or at least it had been before her ransacking had begun) but it was the house that was the problem and – more to the point – the other house. Seraphina could paint the room a bright blue for serenity and fill the walls with posters and pictures of things that made her happy all she wanted and she could fill every corner of the room with books and other trinkets but it was never going to change the fact that there was something wrong with her world.

What that something was, she didn't know – she didn't – but she knew it all the same. Perhaps she had always known it.

Seraphina took a suitcase in both hands and walked as stealthily as she could down the stairs and out the door so she could wait for her taxi on the porch.

Unfortunately, she hadn't been stealthy enough it seemed as she had just set her suitcases down and settled on the porch swing when her mother appeared at the door.

"So," Constance drawled, her lips pursed in disapproval. "You're really doing this."

Seraphina sighed. "Yes, mother, I am really doing this."

Constance heaved a great sigh, as if asking for the strength to get through this coming conversation, before stepping out onto the porch herself and gingerly taking a seat next to Seraphina. "I don't see why you persist in this petty act of rebellion. Do you really hate me that much?"

Seraphina briefly closed her eyes and asked for some strength of her own. "I don't hate you, mother," she said in an even tone.

"Then what's all this then?" Constance demanded, gesturing disdainfully to the suitcases around them.

"They're my luggage," Seraphina explained, purposefully misunderstanding the question. "I have to bring things with me because I'm going to be living away from home."

"Oh, I know that," Constance snapped. "What I'm asking is why."

Seraphina shrugged. "I'm eighteen, mother. I graduated high school last spring. You and Adelaide were even at the ceremony so don't tell me that you've forgotten."

"I didn't forget," Constance said, narrowing her eyes slightly at the perceived insult.

"It's August," Seraphina continued simply. "It's time for me to go to college. And if I weren't doing that then I'd go out and join the work force and move out anyway."

The look Constance gave her showed what she thought about that and Seraphina was reminded once again of why she had taken the somewhat drastic measures of applying entirely to colleges that were at least five hundred miles away. Her mother was a force to be reckoned with and defying her had to be done intelligently. Staying within driving distance would be almost as if she had never left at all and Seraphina knew herself too well to think that she could withstand her mother's constant demands that she return home forever. At least hundreds of miles away she could choose not to pick up the phone.

"I never went to college and it didn't do me any harm," Constance told her.

No, she hadn't. Instead she had been like so many aspiring actresses who had come to the area in order to be famous. Unfortunately, from what Seraphina could understand her mother had been a little too…prim and proper – oh the irony! – to really make it.

"That was a long time ago," Seraphina said delicately, knowing full well that she was treading on dangerous ground by in any way implying that her mother was old despite the fact that she had had a grown daughter when Seraphina was born. "Things have changed somewhat and a lot more people go to college now. Besides, it's the path I'm choosing to pursue."

"But why must it be in New York?" Constance asked, her voice laden with disgust. She might as well be asking why Seraphina was going to go to Sodom or Gomorra. "All of the liberals and fags…you simply cannot do this."

And there it was, her mother's stubbornly parochial way of speaking. It hadn't bothered her when she was younger and didn't know any better but now…She felt her cheeks redden as she remembered 'Me Week' back in elementary school and how she hadn't thought anything of telling the class about her 'Mongoloid sister Adelaide.' Her teacher had been so horrified and sent her down to the principal who had also not been pleased. She had been so terrified because she had never gotten in trouble before and she hadn't even understood what she'd done wrong.

She knew now, of course, but that wasn't even the only time something like that had happened. Seraphina didn't make a habit of knowingly using words that would offend virtually everyone but until she used them at least once and made a fool of herself (and likely convinced everyone she was a terribly unenlightened person) then she often didn't know that a word was bad. Was she supposed to Google every noun her mother said?

"I'll be fine, mother," Seraphina insisted. "Somehow I don't think I'll be of much interest to the gay people I meet."

"Don't be flippant, Sera," Constance commanded imperiously. "This is serious."

"I know it is," Seraphina said appeasingly. "And don't call me that."

Constance blinked, confused. "Don't call you what?"

" 'Sera'," Seraphina replied, wrinkling her nose with distaste.

"That is your name, dear," Constance pointed out.

Seraphina shook her head. "No, it's not. My name is 'Seraphina.' I don't see why you gave us all such beautiful names if you're never going to use them."

Though she didn't actually remember them (how could she? She'd been two when they died), the rare occasions that her mother spoke of her brothers she called the 'Beau' and 'Tate.' Beau was short for Beauregard which was a perfectly lovely name and while she didn't actually know what Tate was short for, she figured that it must be short for something as 'Tate' didn't really fit in with 'Beauregard' and 'Adelaide' and 'Seraphina.' And it was kind of disturbing that her mother always called her – much younger – boyfriends her beaus all things considered. Though it would probably have been creepier if she had known him.

Seraphina never allowed anyone to nickname her (not that her mother ever paid that any mind but at least the rest of the world heeded her request) and she also referred to her sister as 'Adelaide.' Adelaide quite clearly preferred to be called 'Addy' but she was willing to humor her.

"Sera is a perfectly good name as well," Constance argued. Sure it was though no one could ever work out how to spell it. If she were less stubborn she might stop correcting people when they tried to call her 'Sara' or 'Sarah.'

"Would you allow anyone to call you 'Connie'?" Seraphina asked pointedly.

"Certainly not you," Constance replied, avoiding the question. "Now stop avoiding my question." As if she were one to talk. "Why are you so determined to go live so far from home?"

"New York University is one of the best schools not only in the country but the world," Seraphina replied easily. "And they're willing to give me a full ride. Do you know that they have an endowment of 2.43 billion dollars? How could I possibly pass this up?"

"I saw those letters from those other schools," Constance said accusingly. "Did you apply anywhere closer than Phoenix?"

She could lie. "No."

Constance laughed derisively. "And you aren't trying to hurt me."

Seraphina pulled at her hair. "I'm not, I'm really not."

"Then explain," Constance ordered coldly.

Seraphina was quiet for a moment as she tried to formulate her thoughts. "I hate it here. I've always hated it here."

"No you don't," Constance said confidently, dismissing her concerns without thought.

"I do," Seraphina said in a louder voice.

"And what's so bad about here?" Constance demanded. "It's a beautiful neighborhood in a beautiful city and you've never wanted for anything."

"Do you have any idea how much of a hell my school years were?" Seraphina countered. "Especially as I got older. Can you even begin to imagine what it was like going to that high school?"

"I don't remember the quality of the institution being as bad as all that," Constance said, frowning.

"No one wants to be friends with the girl whose brother shot up the school!" Seraphina yelled. "Every day for years people would stare at me, wondering when I was going to snap. Not if, mother, when. New kids would talk to me at first until they heard the story and then they'd disappear, too. Every time I went into the library I saw the plaque to Tate's accomplishment. The teachers always assumed that I was a trouble-maker despite the fact that I went out of my way to be a model student. And the year that I got the teacher that Tate paralyzed…it's a wonder I even passed that class!"

Constance stared at her with a mixture of annoyance and disdain on her face. "Are you quite finished?"

"Almost," Seraphina answered with a grim smile. "So yes, my high school years were hell. I don't know for sure but I'm pretty sure they were worse than Tate's. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to walk out of there and never come back. But do you know what I didn't do? I didn't kill anybody, mother. And I certainly didn't kill fifteen people."

"How dare you," Constance said, her voice icy. "Tate was your brother."

"I'm well aware," Seraphina said wryly. She hadn't meant to say all of that, she really hadn't, but once she had started she couldn't quite stop herself and it had been liberating to get it all out in the open at last.

"Tate had his problems, yes, and I won't deny that he did a terrible thing that day but he paid for it with his life!" Constance continued, her eyes flashing. "Those policemen barged into our house and they gunned him down in his room. They didn't even try to talk to him no matter how much I begged them to. And Tate was always such a troubled boy, never quite as strong as he needed to be."

"That doesn't make it alright," Seraphina said tiredly.

"What's done is done," Constance said firmly. "And it was sixteen years ago besides."

"Tell that to the families," Seraphina suggested mildly.

"Tell that to his mother," Constance snapped. "And you know it was only a few weeks after we lost Beau. 1994 was…not a good year."

Beauregard had apparently been quite disabled. Seraphina wasn't quite sure what had been wrong with him (though when she and Adelaide were watching The Goonies one time Adelaide had pointed to Sloth and declared that that looked like Beauregard. She still wasn't quite sure what to make of that) but apparently it caused him to suffocate. It really was bad timing but it wasn't as if that could have been helped.

"No, it wasn't," Seraphina agreed. 1994, in addition to being the year she lost two brothers she couldn't remember, was the year that they moved out of the house she was born in and into the house next door. She was vaguely aware that they moved back in with the then-owner of the house after a fire or something but that hadn't lasted before he'd been institutionalized. The people who lived next door never seemed to have a very happy fate.

Constance took a deep breath to calm herself. "You're just upset about that poor homosexual couple next door."

"I am," Seraphina agreed. "I liked Chad and Patrick. Chad was always so enthusiastic and Patrick was really funny."

"Just because they were having problems-" Constance began delicately.

"Problems, mother?" Seraphina cut her off. "Chad killed himself after beating the shit out of Patrick, raping him with a fireplace poker, and shooting him four times!"

Constance glared at her for interrupting. "These things just happen sometimes."

"They don't just happen 'sometimes'," Seraphina disagreed. "They happen to everyone who has ever lived in that house! I am sick of living next to the main attraction on the murder tour. I am sick of weirdos coming by at all hours to look at the place where so much crime has occurred. I'm sick of watching new families look around and maybe even move in and wondering what terrible fate is going to befall these seemingly nice, normal people. I've Googled the house, you know. There is not a single person who has lived there ever who has escaped unscathed."

"Now that's not true. You, Addy, and I lived there," Constance pointed out.

"And just what do you call losing Tate and Beauregard?" Seraphina challenged.

"You could still see them if you wanted to," Constance said tentatively.

Seraphina sighed. "Oh, not this again…"

"Close your eyes to the truth if you must, Sera, but it doesn't make it any less true," Constance told her with an air of long-suffering patience.

"Seraphina," Seraphina corrected automatically. "There's no such things as ghosts, mother."

"I don't know how you can say that after having lived next door to that house for most of your life and actually inside of it the rest of it," Constance said, deeply disappointed. "In fact, if you'll look Chad's out on the lawn trying to leave the property right now. He can't, of course."

Seraphina pointed kept her gaze away from where her mother was pointing. "There's no such things as ghosts," she said firmly.

"I don't see why you're being such a fool about this," Constance said, shaking her head in bemusement.

"Mother, I grew up next to the Murder House. There have been dozens of violent murders and suicides that took place there. If there were such a thing as ghosts they would all qualify," Seraphina explained. "And so, you see, I really can't."

"Not even when you're moving?" Constance asked skeptically.

"Oh, you've finally accepted that, have you?" Seraphina asked, surprised.

"No," Constance replied promptly. "But it certainly seems to be your plan."

A yellow taxi slowly came up the street and pulled up to the curb.

"Well, that certainly took its time," Constance said, frowning. "Don't tip the man, Sera."

"Seraphina. And I wouldn't have had to call him at all if you would have been willing to drive me to the airport like I asked you to," Seraphina reminded her.

Constance crossed her arms stubbornly. "Oh, no. I may not be able to stop you…well, that's not strictly true. I may not choose to stop you-" At this Seraphina felt a chill going down her spine "-but I am not going to enable you in this foolishness. You'll come home soon enough."

"I really won't," Seraphina told her, willing her to understand just how important it was for her to get away from everything and to never come back.

Abruptly, Constance's gaze softened. "You remind me so much of Tate right now."

 _Don't say that,_ Seraphina silently begged. _Don't say I'm like him. Don't say I'm anything like him. I can't be, not even a little. I would never have done those things. I don't have it in me. DON'T SAY THAT!_

But Constance hadn't meant to hurt her and she didn't want to start a fight before she left. As long as her mother believed that the spirits of her sons remained in the house next door she would never leave it, Seraphina knew, and if she was never going to come back then this might very well be the last time she ever saw her mother.

She gave her a tight-lipped smile instead and pulled her into an impromptu hug instead. Constance wasn't exactly the hugging type so she stiffened immediately and it said something about the magnitude of the situation that she didn't push her away.

"I'm going to miss you," Seraphina said honestly. "Where's Adelaide? I wanted to say goodbye."

"She's probably off in that house again," Constance said, gesturing vaguely towards the property that Seraphina still refused to look at. "You can go there and say goodbye."

But Seraphina hadn't stepped foot on that property since they had moved out for good. She may not believe any of her mother's ghost stories the way Adelaide did – she didn't – but with a place full of as much dark history as that was it was best not to take chances. She shook her head. "I don't have time."

"Of course you don't, dear. I'll see you for Thanksgiving."

But she wouldn't, Seraphina resolved as she picked up her luggage and headed out to the taxi. Not this Thanksgiving and not the next and not any ever again. This was her one chance to escape it all and she wasn't about to waste it.

As she got into the backseat of the taxi and waited for the car to start moving, she thought she saw a blonde boy in the upstairs window of the house next door watching her.

But that was impossible and so she turned away.


End file.
